Confused about commission reform? You’re probably not alone.
San Francisco voters will face two competing ballot measures this November, both aiming to streamline commissions and advisory boards that provide public oversight for city departments and programs. And recently, Mayor London Breed announced her own third proposal, which could go to voters in 2026.
As Election Day draws near, the competing campaigns behind the two measures ramp up their efforts.
“This November, we have a choice between two measures, Prop. E, which provides real government reform that promotes accountable government, and Prop. D, which reduces citizen participation,” supervisor and mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin told Proposition E supporters rallying outside City Hall on Wednesday.
Proposition E, sponsored by Peskin, would create a task force to evaluate the city’s charter and its nearly 130 commissions and set recommendations for improvements and cuts.
It’s directly competing with Proposition D, sponsored by the billionaire-backed moderate group TogetherSF. That plan would also create a task force to evaluate commission reform to modify the city charter. However, it would go further by promising to eliminate nearly half the city’s current commissions and advisory boards, which could range from the Arts Commission to the Library Commission or the Homeless Oversight Commission. It also sets a new cap of 65 citizen oversight bodies and gives the mayor more appointment power.
“This would just blow up so much, it would be hard to even start to figure out how you could start to fix things,” said Ed Harrington, a former controller for San Francisco and general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, who is opposing Proposition D.
Supporters of Proposition D say their approach would allow the city to make changes more quickly.
“San Francisco’s government structure fundamentally needs reform,” said Kanishka Cheng, the founder of TogetherSF. “It’s grown so big, it’s cumbersome and burdensome for anyone to deal with.”
Breed recently yanked her support for Proposition D, which has faced scrutiny for its ties to mayoral candidate Mark Farrell. But she’s not backing Proposition E either. Instead, Breed is directing the city controller and city administrator to develop and pass a charter reform measure for the 2026 ballot.
“The current charter, with its layers of bureaucracy added over the years, has created inefficiency and diffused accountability across our governance structures,” Breed said in a statement. “The good news is that we can fix this by stepping back and reconsidering the Charter as a whole. That time is now.”
According to political analysts like Jim Ross, the issues with San Francisco’s charter and commission system are not a priority for most voters.
Instead, it’s become a battleground in the fight over checks and balances in San Francisco’s strong mayor system, which includes an elected mayor, a board of supervisors and other elected officials like the city attorney, and whether the city should consolidate power into the hands of fewer officials.
“Most people in San Francisco have no idea how many boards and commissions there are. And I don’t think they understand the role they play in city government,” Ross said. “These are pretty much meaningless in terms of making the city run more efficiently and effectively. I don’t think it will change a huge amount.”
Ross acknowledges that the city’s charter may benefit from some adjustments. But he said that is being overshadowed by politics in the mayor’s race.
Farrell, a former supervisor and interim mayor of San Francisco, has faced criticism for his ties to TogetherSF. He’s also been accused of misusing funds collected through the ballot measure to pay for campaign-related expenses, like interns and other resources.
Candidate contributions from individuals are capped at $500. But billionaires are pouring big money into the ballot measure, like venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who has given nearly $3 million in total to the ballot initiative. Although campaign rules prohibit Farrell from using ballot funds for his campaign, he still appears in ads supporting the ballot measure.
“You have a bunch of these committees, and restructuring them has become a shell vehicle to fund the Mark Farrell-for-mayor campaign,” Ross said. “There might be a real discussion to have there about how the city governs itself, but that hasn’t happened in any of this debate over reform.”
Cheng said that TogetherSF’s approach is fair and legal and pointed out that several other candidates support ballot measures. The city’s nearly 130 commissions include some potentially redundant bodies, and she said that has slowed city officials’ ability to take action on pressing issues.
“Prop. E doesn’t guarantee that anything changes. It was a measure to support Supervisor Peskin,” Cheng said.
Groups like Real Reform SF, which led the rally at City Hall on Wednesday, stressed that Proposition D has significant money — largely from Silicon Valley billionaires like Moritz and donors to conservative causes like William Oberndorf.
“It is not unusual to have somebody running for mayor also attach themselves to a certain kind of proposition and raise money,” Harrington said. “This is different by levels of magnitude, I guess. Would you need $6.5 million to convince people that commissions are a bad thing?”
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